S2 Ep 7. Tales of a Fatal Dispute: The Cantrell-Kennedy Feud

00:00 - David (Host)
neighbors. We all have them. Some of us have neighbors that we've lived next to for a lot of years. But what happens when you move into a new neighborhood and you get new neighbors? That at first you get along, but then something changes and it becomes deadly? Join me, examine the case of the murder of Kenneth Cantrell on this episode of True Crime. Authors and Extraordinary People. 

00:41 - Jaquie (Announcement)
Welcome to True Crime Authors and Extraordinary People, the podcast where we bring two passions together, the show that gives new meaning to the old adage truth is stranger than fiction. And reminding you that there is an extraordinary person in all of us. Here is your host, David McClam. 

01:03 - David (Host)
What's going on, everybody, and welcome to another episode of True Crime Authors and Extraordinary People. Of course I'm your man, david McClam. Hey, have you guys already made sure you're following us on all of our social medias? One link to a link tree would get you every link you need to have pertaining to the show. Alright, so a couple things to take care of before we dive into today's case. As you can see, this is being dropped on a different day, so Thursday now will be the day that True Crime Authors and Extraordinary People will drop to you. Alright, if you guys haven't already, I hope you have been checking out the show. Murder in the 21st. As of this recording, they are about three episodes in this show is amazing because it actually showcases us, the True Crime podcasters. So every episode that you see, you're gonna learn something new about a new True Crime podcast that is out there. They take some of their interviews that they've done, but people surrounding that particular case, and it's fascinating. Don't forget, on November 10th, my very own La Donna Humphrey will be on that show representing our new podcast Extinguished, and you can see her interview Melissa Ponder, who is the widow of Scott Ponder of the Super Bike Murders. 

02:31
Alright, so let's jump in to today's case. This is a case that I feel like a lot of people haven't heard of. If you have never watched the show Fear Thy Neighbor that airs on Investigation Discovery. These are the type of cases I like to try to bring to you guys because, remember, I do True Crime for the cases that no one knows and the ones that we should never forget. So today we're gonna talk about the murder of Kenneth Cantrell. 

03:09
As you guys know, I have had my own personal dispute with one of my neighbors and I refuse to continue to help him because he became violent. Some of these feuds ends up in death and I'm the first one to tell you that the authorities don't care about it. When I went down to the courthouse to even think about pressing a restraining order, what the judge had put back on that paper would have infuriated the situation even more, because the courts don't care. And one of the things the judge wrote was these two are neighbors is insignificant. He ordered no all kind of protections. So to somebody who's already violent, that already wants to hurt somebody, that already feels like that, they're already above the law. When you have the law saying we ain't gonna do anything about it. Come to our hearing in a month. What do you think happens from there? Well, this case the murder of Kenneth Cantrell is all around a neighbor dispute. 

04:11
There is no Wikipedia for this case. I am piecing this together from my knowledge of watching the show, which that episode was called Desperate House. Knives on Fear Thy Neighbor, as well as some articles. The article that I'm going to use today for you guys comes from the CinemaHolic and it is entitled Kennedy Cantrell Murder, where Arjillion and Kennedy and Tasha Cantrell. Now let's dive in to what happened. 

04:40
Kenneth Eugene Rooster Cantrell Sr was born in May of 1965. Kenneth worked in construction and was married to Tasha Cantrell. She was a stay-at-home mom who had her hands full with their three kids, nate, zach and Troy. They decided to move to a nice neighborhood in Pegram because of the schools in the vicinity. A new phase of their life started off pretty well, but as time progressed things took a fatal turn. So on May 21, 2004, kenneth got into an altercation with the neighbor that resulted in gunshots being fired. Kenneth was shot in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun Amidst the chaos. The gunshot wounds were too serious for him to survive. All Tasha could do was look on, but this altercation was a result of months of arguments and conflicts with their neighbors that sadly escalated to someone being killed. I want you guys, as a listeners, to understand that Cantrells did everything that they were supposed to do, like I did. They had called the police several times. They tried to squash the issue several times, but nothing ever happened. 

05:54
The Cantrells family's next door neighbors were the Kennedys, chris and Jillian, who had already been living there when the Cantrells moved in. Both families got along well initially, given that Chris and Jillian also had three sons of their own. The kids played together, while Jillian, who was also a stay-at-home mom, spent time with Tasha, but things started to deteriorate very quickly. There was a lot of back and forth between them regarding the kids playing on the street and a myriad of other things. Families were called over to the neighborhood many times as a result of their feuding, and on the show it was stated that Jillian at one point called the authorities when Tasha's kids rode their bicycles without having their helmets on. The Kennedys claimed that the neighbors taunted them, vandalized their property and shot BB guns at them. Chris later said I felt like putting a helmet on and grabbing me a shield and running to my truck every morning. So you have to understand that Kenneth was being harassed every morning. He went on to his truck and this was all over. 

07:07
The Kennedys mainly Jillian not liking the kids playing. If they made any ounce of noise they had a fit about it and if I remember the house right, they were kind of all on a colder sack. So when they were having three boys they would understand. Kids are going to go out and play, boys are going to play. They're going to be a little noisy. But she started having all these problems with that. Now she claims that the Cantrell's kids were shooting BB guns at them, but from what I've read, that really wasn't happening and they were doing everything they could not to antagonize Jillian at all. So these constant problems between the two families came to a head on May 21, 2004. On that day, chris and Kenneth were embroiled in a fistfight on Chris's property after an argument. At this point Jillian came out with a shotgun. The gun went off and hit Chris in the hands a non-fatal injury but Kenneth was hit in the chest. Jillian claimed that the gun went off accidentally, when she was only looking to protect her husband, but that ended with three boys losing their father in a matter of minutes. 

08:26
Again, people, why are we grabbing guns? I understand that sometimes there is a need. My wife and I have actually discussed guns because of my next door neighbor. And what am I willing to do if that came down to that? And my answer was I'm prepared, but I hope it never comes to that. If somebody's going to get into a fistfight, my first thought's not going to be let me go grab a gun, because these types of things happen. 

08:52
Now, because of all of the feuding, because of all the complaining, this has now led Kenneth and Chris to a fistfight, and I think, if I remember correctly, how it all came down was basically Chris wanted to say something to Kenneth about his kids and they got into words back and forth, and then, the next thing, you know, they're in the middle of a fight with fists. Now Jillian wants us to believe that when she shot Kenneth it was accidental. Now some can argue that maybe that was the case, because it hit her own husband in the hands, which was non-fatal. But what's not being said? Or they haven't told us, at least, or I haven't found. It is okay. Was there only one gunshot? Did the bullet that hit Chris's hands go through his hand and then into Kenneth? We don't know, but all we know is Chris got hit too, but at the end only one person was dead. Now we have three boys that don't have their father because of the fact that there was a dispute with the neighbors because of kids playing, which there had never been a problem with this before when they moved in. 

10:11
I want you guys to think about that. We don't know what happened to Jillian. I read it to you earlier. When the Can Trails moved in, everybody got along, all the kids was playing and then overnight this happens and don't think I haven't thought about that myself. Now the neighbor has chilled out, maybe down the road I'm able to tell you that. I'm just gonna tell you it involved TV and at this point I can't talk about it. But there is gonna be a time when I'm gonna be able to talk about it and I'm gonna bring it to you guys as an update on my NeighborDispute case, because I think you guys didn't know what went on and I'm gonna tell you don't ever go on any TV show that calls you, no matter how they tell you things is gonna be handled correctly. Don't buy it, but that's for another story. So stay tuned for that one. 

11:03
But I think about it all the time. What if I do gotta take him out because of his own ignorance? Remember, I'm not the one being violent. I got videos to prove that I've never raised my hand, my voice, never threatened anybody, didn't do anything. You're coming at me now. So now, even though I don't live in the state, in your ground state, I do live in a state, like you guys do. That says self-defense and with all the evidence that I have, I'll have to pull a gun and shoot him directly in his chest. As he's coming at me. I think I'll walk Because after months and months of him threatening me and cussing me and trying to intimidate me even now he still tries to stare me down and my wife down, and his wife has things to say that stuff boils over and it ends up in these situations and that's the first thing that I said, as because they say you can answer back to the judge in writing and I said have you not ever heard of the show Fear Thy Neighbor? These things are not fake, these are real cases, real people that's dead because of neighborly disputes. So what happened to Jillian now. So she was charged with second degree murder and 12 counts of aggravated assault and if she were to be found guilty she faced 15 to 60 years for the murder charge and two to 15 years for assault. But her trial resulted in a hung jury which meant that she was not sent to prison. 

12:24
Jillian believed she did the right thing that day. She said I took the gun out there to scare him, to just leave us alone. You know Well what have we done so much that you hate us? On the show it was stated that the Kennedys moved out of the neighborhood after the trial and there is not a lot of information available regarding her current whereabouts. Well, here's my question you took the gun out to scare him. 

12:52
Every gun has a thing called a safety. I was gonna say maybe the gun should not have been loaded. But I will say that you don't never know what kind of things is gonna come your way if you're gonna pull out a gun. When I was taking gun training and I was in the Boy Scouts, the first thing I would say to you is don't ever pull a gun unless you are prepared to use it. 

13:13
So what happened to the safety? What happened to pointing the gun up in the air Saying if you don't leave my husband alone, I'm gonna shoot you? If your husband got shot in the hand, that means that she ran out there pointing the gun towards them. Now let's look at the other side of that, of how that could have been fatal for Jillian. She's pointing the gun in the vicinity of where her husband is fighting with this other man. Your idea is to scare them. The gun goes off accidentally. Luckily for you, your husband didn't die because you could have killed both of them that day. 

13:56
But nobody thinks of the consequences that happens after you do these things, like my neighbor doesn't think of the consequences that happens if you throw that punch and you hit me. With all the information that has been collected during this few, with all of the things I've known about you and your house in the last 14 years, you don't know the consequences you are going to face now after you throw that punch. We don't think about that. I do. I guess maybe it's my age, but everything I do now I think about what could happen if I do not think about what could be the consequence if this doesn't go the way that I want it to go? What is the overall end result for me? What can I lose if I do this thing? This is clearly not what Jillian was thinking about that day. She wasn't thinking about what happens to the gun as something goes off. She wasn't thinking about what if I aim to shoot Kenneth but I miss and shoot Chris. She wasn't thinking that, just like her and Chris, that Kenneth and Tasha have three boys that deserve to have their father. 

15:16
Well, what's happened to Tasha Cantrell since then? Tasha did mention that she and Jillian were friendly at one point, but their relationship took a hit once her behavior changed. She also felt that her husband was murdered. She said my husband didn't have a knife. He didn't have anything in his hands at all. She chose to take the law into her own hands and kill my husband. He should be here today with his kids. 

15:41
In the aftermath of the incident, tasha moved out of Peegram with her family. Now Tasha is a mother to five sons and she has six grandchildren as well, and, from what we can tell, she still seems to live in Tennessee and spends quality time with her family. I totally understand where she's coming from, because that's how it wasn't me and my neighbor. We got along and when his wife that he has now currently moved in, like I said, she became the catalyst, she's the instigator Things started to change. And so when people start to change, you have to do what I did and probably what the Cantrells did, which is basically you just stay to yourself, you know, you don't say anything. You let them do what they do. My daughter would like they keep staring at me. I'm like looks. Never killed anybody until he does something that he's not supposed to do. Leave him be so. 

16:43
You know it came in a hung jury. Tasha was further upset. So when they arrested Julian after the shooting, it took about a month to get in front of a judge and the judge decided that he was going to set bail at $150,000. That'd be circuit judge Robert Birch. Tonya was devastated and she did make this statement. I'm sitting there wondering who to trust because I don't feel like the justice system is working for me. Here's the deal. I don't see why the jury was hung. 

17:17
Even if you want to put 50% of the blame on Kenneth which, because I've been through it, maybe I'm biased I don't think you put 50% of the blame on him. I think you put about 98% of the blame on the Kennedys and you put maybe 2%, if you want, on Kenneth, because there comes a time where you get tired. I have one of my videos where you see me shouting back at my neighbor because I have been put through this for two months, when he's staring me down and every single day I get out of my car. He's got something to say. There comes a point where the most calmest person gets tired. But words are just words and, if I remember right, chris was the instigator. He was the fight starter, he threw the punch. When you throw a punch at a man, what do you expect him to do? 

18:11
But even if you want to put 50% of the blame on Kenneth, why is it a hung jury when that man had no weapon, no gun, no knife, didn't tell anybody to go get a gun, didn't have a hot and a bun in his shirt. He was out there with bare hands, like your husband. I agree with Tasha that is murder. I don't care if it is accidental because of the fact that you had intent. The intent was when you went and grabbed that gun. If you grabbed the gun, in my opinion you already had the thought that at some point. You may use this gun. Y'all can tell me if you disagree. 

18:57
But again, I gave you the scenarios of what she could have done. If she didn't intend to try to harm anybody, put the gun in the air. Make sure the safety is on. If you ain't gonna put in the air, put it out the ground. Put it away from where the people are fighting. But this is not what she did. No way that jury had been hung. Now here's the only way I could think about it. 

19:25
While I was hung, they didn't give us counts. They did not say how many was for her and how many was against. I'm hoping that more people was against her going free. I will remind you of this. If you never sell a jury, it only takes one person to hang it in the US. We don't know what side that person was on. We don't know if that person was the not guilty and everybody else was guilty, or if that person was guilty and everybody else was not guilty. I haven't been able to find that anywhere. As to what the count was, it just says that her jury was hung. 

20:09
I'm hoping that the person that hung it was the person that was saying no, this is murder, I'm not going to do it. I've hung juries before because stories didn't look great. So we don't know what side of that hung jury fell on. But I still say, even if the one person was a person that said this person is guilty and everybody else said not guilty, where is the other 11 people doing the trial? Where is the other 11 people when they show clips? Where is the other 11 people when, I'm sure, the defense attorney said but my client was completely unharmed, Therefore he was killed in cold blood? In any other situation this would have been considered a cold blooded murder and the person who pulled that trigger would have went to jail for murder one. 

21:06
Now you may disagree, but think about it. If I was walking to an open field and somebody's out there and I'm like, yeah boy, y'all out here fighting, give me my gun, and I just start pulling triggers, that's cold blood. They're going to say he had an intent to shoot him because he made a statement before he had to say give me my gun to me. That's the same thing that happened here and she said it. I felt like I had to protect my husband, so the only way she felt like she could do that is by going to grab a 12 gauge shotgun of all the guns of 12 gauge. 

21:44
I don't know how much y'all know about guns I don't know a whole lot about them either but I do know that a 12 gauge was designed to put a hole in you. If you hit somebody the right way with the right caliber of shotgun shell or whatever you got in there, that person is not coming back. It's like a Magnum. They're like that thing's like a cannon. So am I looking at it from a jury's perspective? I'm like so you grabbed a shotgun, you can grab a life and wave it. Did you have another gun in the house that was smaller than the shotgun? If you coming out with a shotgun and you have an opposite between a shotgun and a pistol and you chose a shotgun, you came to do some damage that day. 

22:34
Now here's the question to think about and the reason as it is. You should go and watch the show because it was really close to the real thing. Here's the question If Chris had gotten away from Kenneth in the middle of that fight, would she still have shot Kenneth? Now you have a clear shot at him. Chris is not in the way and the way that it was made to look, at least on TV, was that she did actually pull the trigger when she thought that Chris could not be hit, when she thought that Chris has spun Kenneth around just enough for her to get that shot off. If the answer is yeah, you think she still would have shot him. She should be in jail for murder. And I do think that she still would have shot him because the rage that went on for so long, everybody had already boiled over it. 

23:44
This was the final straw and before trial, when Birch put on that $150,000 bail, you got her attorneys and Birch out here trying to make everybody feel better by saying things like they have every assurance in the justice system and that if she even was to threaten someone she would go back to jail immediately. Her bail would be revoked. People wasn't raised and her bail was so low. Man, usually if you murder somebody that's automatically a million, and I agree with what she said. This woman named Bre love said those assurances are not quite enough for her, and I agree. When's the last time that if somebody really is helping on getting you that, you actually saw them say oh, by the way, I'm on bail, I can't do that. There's a whole lot of cases I could bring you if he was on bail and they weren't committed murder right when there was on bail. And now the judge in hot water because he or she ordered that bail when they already knew what this person did and what this person was capable of. So, guys, I guess all I can say about the end of this case is you know, try to study yourself. 

25:04
These neighbor situations are getting out of hand. There are several, several seasons now of fear thy neighbor, and all of these are based on real cases. The police and the judicial system needs to understand that's because somebody is a next door neighbor. That is insignificant and they live next door. These are reasons why people get killed, and when we as citizens try to do things legally to protect ourselves, sometimes the law leaves us no other choice but to take the law in our own hands. When these things keep happening, no man or no woman is going to stand by and watch somebody intentionally hurt their family, and that's why I call the police for me. 

25:55
I said I want all of this on record, since you guys are telling me you can't do nothing to him and the judge say that this is a joke. I want all this on record. I want the number of times I'll call the police. I want you to see that I went to follow his training order but it would have been a joke. So if anything happens, well, I got to get physically violent and take this guy out, or he takes me out and my wife goes to sue you. I want all these calls to show up because I tried to do everything legally possible that I could and you guys laughed at my face. All right, guys, I hope you took away some from this one. I hope nobody out there is in a neighborhood dispute. But if you are remember, grabbing a gun should be your last resort. Try to do everything you can legally first, and I know sometimes that's hard, but I think sometimes we can solve some of these things without attorney. 100% violent. Also, I'll keep you in mind. You keep in mind. 

26:49
Please tune in to Murder the 21st. Let me know what you think about the show November 10th. I remind you again, close to that date we will be on that show. Extinguish has dropped. We dropped Extinguish October 15th. You can find a link to that show down below. 

27:03
It is an excellent show, I think not just because I do it. Ladonna Humphrey makes this more excellent than I could ever. But we're doing long form cases over there, so we get to take one case per month, take our time and tell you all the ends and out of the case. So if you have not heard the Superbite murders, you need to go to Extinguish. Listen to me and LaDonna break that down for you over that four weeks, so over the whole entire month of October, which we still have a couple to go. But I hope you guys will tune in over there, all right? So that about does it for us today. 

27:48
I'm glad you guys decided to join me here. I know you have many options in True Crime and Interview Podcast and I am just grateful that I have been one of those for a little over the last year. Be sure to check out the other shows. I'm associated with Deep Dark Secrets, which is hosted by LaDonna Humphrey and Amy Smith, and also Extinguish, with LaDonna Humphrey and myself. We call this the Ring of True Crime and Our Little Network. I hope you guys will tune in and check those out. All right, I hope you're being safe, being good to yourself and to each other and always remember, always stay humble. An act of kindness can make someone's day. A little love and compassion can go a long way, and remember that there is an extraordinary person in all of us. I'll catch you on the next one. 

28:56 - Jaquie (Announcement)
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